Reconciliation
by VerityR
Summary: Ronan tries to tell the difference between miracles and magic, the sinner and the sin.
Ronan knew what he believed.

 _I believe in one God,_

 _the Father almighty,_

 _maker of heaven and earth,_

 _of all things visible and invisible._

But he also knew what he was.

It seemed like a contradiction, Ronan was well aware. To the others, if not to him. Blue and Gansey with their New Age crap, their wishy-washy Protestantism: light on the rituals, heavy on the biblical literalism. Catholicism was old. It was used to contradiction. Ronan wasn't interested in the literal, and he didn't have to be. He went through the motions. He did things right. Was Eve torn from Adam's rib cage? Did God drown everyone but Noah and his pals? Did it matter?

Old religions absorb to survive. Look at the Celtic fucking cross. Jesus, even Christmas trees. All the old pagan stuff gets worked in, just fine. Religion wasn't so cut and dry.

And neither was reality, Ronan knew from experience. He saw crazier shit than anything the Bible could spit out before breakfast. Well, maybe not Revelations. His shit was about on par with fiery lakes of burning sulfur. Ronan had room in his head for God. It made a sort of sense to him. But Ronan couldn't know if he made sense to God.

But that was okay. Because Ronan went to church. He prayed. He didn't go to confession often because he didn't want to lie, but he did few Hail Mary's after he pulled any shit that he felt was truly pushing it. It was about family to him, he realized. Tradition. This was the way his father had spent his Sunday's. His father's father. On another continent, in a different world. It was all okay, because Ronan felt good, getting this one thing right.

Blue had asked him, once, how he could dismiss psychics as sinners, their readings as heretic, occult. As a Greywaren, she meant, not stopping to consider all the ways in which Ronan Lynch personified sin. Not that she could know. Not that he wanted anyone to know so much.

That's the sticky thing about omniscience, though. Ronan wouldn't lie. Not to his brothers, his friends, not to himself- when he could help it. But he was an expert on omission. Secrets were one thing, lies another. Ronan had perfected the art of keeping secrets without telling lyings. But neither worked on God. There wasn't anything to be done about that.

The magic stuff wasn't has hard to reconcile as they might think. Magic, miracles. It was semantics. Bread into body, wine into blood. Who's to say his powers weren't of the same sort? Dream into reality. What was it, if not transubstantiation?

Other things weren't as easy to dismiss.

" _Things"_

Ronan could barely come to terms with it in his own head, sorry bastard that he was. He had always tried to convince himself he was just looking.

Gansey's crew team, the one time he could be bothered to go to a regatta. Shifting muscles under tanned skin.

But everyone noticed that, right?

Laps, gym class. Boys wiping sweat from their brow with the hem of their t-shirts. Abs. Hair. Jesus Christ, do _not_ look where that leads.

Did everyone else have force themselves to avert their eyes?

August, the air conditioner busted in Monmouth. Adam working on his common app essay, tugging his shirt off over his head lazily, pencil behind his ear the whole time. A bead of sweat falling down his neck. Imagining licking it away.

It all fell apart when Ronan let himself imagine. Because he knew what he wanted.

Ronan could bring anything out of his dreams. But this? He could not allow himself this. He didn't dare to think about it.

Was it wrong? Maybe not. He didn't care what other people did, after all. He didn't hate anybody. But, still, Ronan hated himself. Which, granted, he might have anyway. Even excluding the other _things_.

He didn't feel right. This wasn't who he should be. Why him? Why was it so easy for everyone else just to be right? To be normal? And, fuck it, maybe he was going to hell anyway. For drinking, for smoking, for disrespecting authority. For killing the things from his dreams. For thinking about the revenge he wanted so desperately.

But all of that was what he did. It wasn't what he was.

Could he ask forgiveness for what he was?

Should he even have to?

Because he knew it didn't matter that he wasn't acting on it. Yet. As a Catholic, Ronan knew that even a thought could be sin. As a Greywaren, Ronan knew thoughts and reality weren't so far removed.

God had made Ronan Lynch. That much was clear. All Ronan could hope was that he did it on purpose.


End file.
